


Heartlines

by literallyjohnwatson



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literallyjohnwatson/pseuds/literallyjohnwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These drawings—they left too much evidence of his hidden fervor and ardor. John could see it as clear as day. The things that he never painted blatantly on his face played out on the papers before him. Try as he might (and John was sure he had tried), Sherlock could not stop himself from spilling out onto the page. Perhaps he was embarrassed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartlines

**Author's Note:**

> These are the things I think about in drawing class instead of drawing. But I really do think that Sherlock would be very apt at the visual arts, since it is a lot about observation.

“Sherlock, what’s this?” John called from the other room, not taking his eyes off the curious items he’d just discovered buried in the closet whilst searching for a pair of trainers he hadn’t seen in months.  
  
He sat in the middle of the closet with his discovery in his lap—a professional, black portfolio that required a little bit of dusting off, filled with various drawings executed on dog-eared and slightly yellowed paper.  
  
Sliding them out of the portfolio, he smiled fondly as he turned the first one over and immediately spied “SH” wrought in a familiar untidy scrawl in the lower righthand corner.  
  
As he thumbed through the stack, he was considerably surprised at how skillfully rendered the drawings were. The earliest ones were simple still lifes, consisting of boxes, wine bottles and vases. The middle of the stack revealed objects of increasing difficulty and complexity; paper bags, skulls of animal and human variety, flowers, and towards the end, the human figure. Some were executed carefully in graphite, others were wistfully sketched with charcoal. A few contained colorful splashes of pastel. Some were on low quality newsprint—quick studies and drafts—and others—more completed drawings—on heavier, higher quality paper.  
  
The one thing that remained constant throughout the stack was the quality and finesse which they possessed. John didn’t know much about art, but even his untrained eye could see that each stroke was placed on the paper with purpose, no mark was arbitrary. Each drawing held a loose, seemingly untidy style, but was incredibly cohesive and stable as a whole. Underneath the expressive surface lay a greater understanding of the objects they represented.  
  
John was so engrossed and impressed by the works that he barely noticed when Sherlock sauntered up behind him to answer his earlier call.  
  
“Sherlock, did you do these?” he inquired, a smile playing on his lips and his eyes still searching the papers.  
  
“Oh,” his brows turned in almost undetectably, as if he was trying to hide his surprise at seeing them. “I was required to take an art class at university. Waste of my time if you ask me,” he commented, rolling his eyes and slumping back into the sitting room.  
  
Pursing his lips, he straightened up the stack, carefully slid it back into the portfolio, and followed after Sherlock. John wasn’t about to let Sherlock play this off. The drawings had been carefully stored in the corner amidst a wide array of junk haphazardly tossed in the closet, and extra care had been taken to minimize their ruffling. John had been living with Sherlock long enough to know that organizing anything with this particular consideration was not something he did often.  
  
“You didn’t think these were a waste of your time, Sherlock,” John stated, still flourishing the portfolio. If John knew any better he’d say Sherlock looked slightly stunned by his accusation.  
  
“If you did, you wouldn’t have kept them and they wouldn’t have been tucked away so neatly. And all the backs are signed. I think you’re secretly pretty chuffed about them.”  
  
Sherlock cocked an eyebrow and pretended to ignore John, fiddling inconsequentially with his phone. John huffed and put his hands on his hips.  
  
“They’re really quite good, you know,” he spoke up again. Sherlock gave an exasperated sigh.  
  
“The root of this type of drawing is not natural skill. It’s keen observation and understanding of how the human eye perceives images. If you know how to look at something correctly, it’s not difficult to recreate it in an aesthetically pleasing way.”  
  
“Do you have to make everything sound so clinical?”  
  
“What did you honestly expect, some nonsense about me being ‘inspired’ and ‘passionate’?”  
  
As John flipped through the work again, he knew Sherlock couldn’t be completely emotionally detached from it. Though no doubt the drawings were a direct result of Sherlock’s impeccable observational skills, traces of his personality were left all over them. Some of the lines looked so powerful and forceful, fluid and moving—it reminded John of the swooping of his trademark coat as he entered a room. They demanded attention just like Sherlock himself did. In other places, the rendering had been handled with such a careful, fluttering touch—just like Sherlock’s fingers delicately skirting over the skin of a lifeless body from the morgue. Whether Sherlock realized (or admitted) it, his personal touch was unmistakably present in the drawings.  
  
“Well whatever your approach was, it worked. I mean it. These are impressive.”  
  
Sherlock only grunted in reply. Sherlock was usually so eager to boast and show off, why should this be any different? He wasn’t like this when John praised him over his violin playing. Perhaps it was because the music he made was fleeting. The sounds he coaxed out of the instrument were of course incredibly evocative of human emotion. But he played the song, set his bow down, and left behind no evidence of his zeal for the music. Even when he wrote his own scores, John got no emotional context whatsoever when he viewed them. Notes on a staff were like a foreign language to him.  
  
But these drawings—they left too much evidence of his hidden fervor and ardor. John could see it as clear as day. The things that he never painted blatantly on his face played out on the papers before him. Try as he might (and John was sure he had tried), Sherlock could not stop himself from spilling out onto the page. Perhaps he was embarrassed.  
  
“They’re mediocre at best,” Sherlock scoffed, not even bothering to look up from the text he was casually composing.  
  
“You’re an idiot,” John retorted, returning to the closet to place the drawings back in their carefully chosen hiding spot.  
  
He still never found his trainers.  
  
___________________________________________  
  
John tried to busy himself with the arduous and repetitive task of sorting through all of the contents of the closet. Most of the things in there weren’t his, and he wasn’t sure why Sherlock had found it necessary to keep most of it. But then again, he’d never been sure why Sherlock found a lot of things necessary.  
  
He tried not to pay much attention to the things he was brusquely organizing or tossing out. If he lingered too long on any one object, he would inevitably be reminded of Sherlock-of something he had did or said once, something that had made John laugh. And he would smile, maybe even chuckle, and then with a lurch of his stomach he would realize that he’d never smile on Sherlock’s account again.  
  
There was no way he could bear to stay here. Sherlock’s presence was still too heavy. His papers and books and experiments everywhere, his scent still hanging in the air. The more time he spent in 221B the more he was convinced that Sherlock would stride through that door again, his coat whirling around him, the collar turned up around his enigmatic face. He felt the maw of emptiness inside him growing every time he realized that was a sight he’d never see again.  
  
As he sorted through the pile of mostly seemingly useless objects, his breath caught in his throat as he noticed the familiar but forgotten black portfolio. He abandoned the junk he was currently holding, and seized the folder from its hiding spot. A fresh coat of dust had formed since John had last cleared it off.  
  
He cursed himself, but he could not refrain from searching through the folder. His throat was tight as he flicked through the pieces, and he blinked back tears as he recognized the complete honesty that was present in every line of them. Everything he saw in these drawings screamed in protest against the things Sherlock had said to him on the rooftop. Sherlock couldn’t have lied—not about those things. He let his fingers skirt across the pages, knowing that Sherlock’s hands had once been on them too, warm and nimble and skilled. Hands that would never again create or help or solve. Hands that would forever lay idle.  
  
Later that night, he came home to his unfamiliar and unwelcoming flat. A place completely devoid of any trace of Sherlock, devoid of everything his life had once been. It was against his better judgement to do this—he knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors by forcing himself to look at something that was so completely reminiscent of Sherlock—but nonetheless he carefully hammered a nail through the drywall.  
  
He had selected a charcoal rendering of a human skull—how very Sherlock. His hands slid over the cool, simple black frame he’d chosen. One that was elegant and sleek but didn’t detract from the qualities of the piece.  
  
Straightening the frame on the wall, he slowly exhaled and stepped away, admiring the work. He swallowed hard and grinned tentatively at the drawing before stating simply,  
  
“You’re still an idiot.”


End file.
